In The Beginning

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, there was a princess who liked to shoot off her mouth. She had a quaint little blog about the evil dragon called Fatzilla and the endless battle she waged against him. She was a fierce competitor, a master of the little-known kung fu style called Floating Princess, which is characterized by a façade of sweetness and light that makes the sudden blasts of snark she can deliver so unexpected that she can often incapacitate her opponent with a single shot.

She went on for a couple of years telling the tales of the princess vs. Fatzilla and it was good. For the most part the princess ruled the day, but every once in a while Fatzilla would find the princess’ biggest weakness, Coldstone Creamery (aka kryptonite), and the princess would helpless against the onslaught of cold, sweet, creamy goodness. It was an epic battle, and there are those that believe it is still being fought to this very day.

Then some stuff happened that had nothing to do with Fatzilla and she blogged about that too. There was work badness and family strife, and in her weakened condition during the recovery period of the kryptonite-induced insanity, she let that all hang out too. That was a mistake she only realized too late. She had no choice but to take the nuclear option, that sad, sad step of blog deletion. It was a dark day for the princess for she loved her blog, but she knew that the forces of evil were not relegated to the likes of Fatzilla alone. There are many ways one can invite the dark side to touch your life and blogging about work is like standing in a rainstorm holding a golf club. Sooner, rather than later, you are likely to get scorched.

The princess spent many months in pseudo-exile from the blogosphere, reading only in the dark under the cover of the feedreader with a flashlight and commenting so infrequently that few in the land knew that she still lurked in the wings. It made her feel sad and lonely and she started to get some crazy thoughts – like what if she started a new blog? Different. Better. Stronger. Faster. Able to leap tall dragons in a single bound.

Should she do it? Should she become that person that deletes her blog only to start a new one months later? A blogger cliché? And would anyone care? Who knew? Did she care if anyone cared? The eternal question – if a blog arrives in the wilderness but no one reads it, is it still there?

She had some decisions to make and some plans to lay. The princess was not savvy to the ways of the non-generic blog format. In the before-times, when she was plotting the downfall of Fatzilla, she used a no-fuss, no-muss platform that allowed her to spill her guts with minimal maintenance on her part. This was ok because it was more difficult for her to break it, but it didn’t have a lot of bells or whistles and let’s fact it – a princess is all about her bling. She didn’t want to go back to a plain jane Blogger format. She wanted something more, something better. She wanted a WordPress blog. And not just any WordPress blog, but a fully-customizable blog that she could tart up however she wanted.

But she knew nothing about WordPress, or CSS, or FTP, http, html, mysql, e-i-e-i-o, so she did some surfing and started to learn about hosts and domains. She had some research to do but now she was getting excited. She bought a book and started to read, and all these entries started floating around in her head. She had squelched her voice for too long and the impatience was getting to her. Oh to get it all down on paper! Ok, not so much paper, but you know. The face of the FP kingdom is a work in progress, a sign of her impatience to get on with it already. It will change and grow as she learns the language of this new world. All suggestions for improvement, helpful hints and tips, and constructive criticisms are always welcome in the comments or by email.

There are new faces in the land of the Floating Princess that you will meet, and some of the old characters are no longer with us. Fatzilla will always be around, but he’s not going to be playing such a prominent role in this story. This is more a story of the life of a princess, and a very opinionated princess at that. There will be stuff about food because the princess loves the food and the foodie life, there will definitely be cake because what is a princess without cake, there will be stories about her court and her castle and her flock (of turkeys). You can bet there will be some laughing, some crying, probably a good bit of whining, and yes, there will be a hissy fit or two. Or ten. Some if it will be the same as before, some of it different, but it will always be floating princess style.